White House Adds Andrew Bates to Press Team After TJ Ducklo Departure

The White House announced Thursday that it was hiring Andrew Bates, a former aide on President Joe Biden’s campaign, weeks after deputy press secretary T.J. Ducklo resigned in disgrace last month for threatening a reporter.

Bates, who was the director of rapid response for the Biden campaign, and then worked in communications on the transition team, is an outspoken presence on Twitter, where he mocked reporters — and had an exchange with Ducklo about “sh*t-canned” White House staffers.

“The bored reporter whose predictions during the primary were unfailing wrong put down their Le Diplomate delivery,” Bates wrote on May 12, 2020, as Biden was locking up his position as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee. “It was time to say it. ‘Voters don’t give a shit about fixing our economy,’ they confidently tweeted from their iPad. They care about video backdrops and process!'”

Le Diplomate is a Washington restaurant where the duck l’orange runs $34.

Ironically, he also dropped an S-bomb in an exchange with Ducklo — to revel in the prospect that staffers in President Donald Trump’s White House might be “sh*t-canned.”

“Hey @AndrewBatesNC, this might be a good time to ask,” Ducklo wrote in the May 17 missive directed at Bates. “When a new administration is sworn in, do the political staff from the previous one get to stay on?”

“Hell no,” Bates replied. “They get sh*t-canned.”

Bates will begin working on Monday, according to the White House. Ducklo left the position in February after the revelation he had threatened Tara Palmieri, a reporter at Politico who planned to report on Ducklo’s relationship with Alexi McCammond, who was then a reporter at Axios. “I will destroy you,” Ducklo allegedly told Palmieri.

Correction: This story has been updated to clarify that Bates did not replace Ducklo directly in the White House press shop.